Nearby Solar Systems are Obscured by Starlight

This is one of the highest quality images ever made of a nearby star
(one called Gliese 105, just over 28 light years from Earth). The point
of light to the upper right is a much smaller and fainter star orbiting
the bright one near the center of the image. It orbits the bright star
at a distance of over 30 times the distance between our Earth and the
Sun. Because the primary star is so bright and its light pervades much
of this image, any planets orbiting this star are impossible to see in
this image. An exact copy of Earth orbiting this star would be about 10
million times fainter than the small star at the upper right and would
sit barely a pixel away from the center of the picture. This image was
made with the Palomar 200 inch Hale
Telescope with the assistance of a sophisticated adaptive optics system
and an extremely precise infrared camera.

Modern astronomical instruments have made images of things
that were
unimaginable less than a century ago: galaxies as they appeared when
the universe was very young; the Milky Way in various wavelengths of
light; gravitational lenses that demonstrate esoteric, but
significant, aspects of our physical understanding of the universe.

Despite all this power to see strange parts of the universe,
parts so
unlike where we work, eat, walk, and read, we have yet to see another
world like our own. We have significant and solid evidence that
planets exist in orbit about stars other than our Sun, but this
evidence comes from extremely precise measurements of those stars, not
the planets themselves.

Why, if we can see incomprehensibly large distances in space
and time,
past countless stars and billions of galaxies, can we not see what is,
in astronomical terms, just down the street, in orbit about the
nearest star? The answer is that stars emit so much light that they
drown out anything right next to them that is substantially fainter,
such as their planets and disks of orbiting dust. In order to see
these so-called "exoplanets"
one must get rid of the starlight.

The Lyot Project, involving scientists
from around the United States with varied backgrounds, is an attempt
to build an instrument that can remove more of the starlight from
images of nearby solar systems than has ever before been possible. We
intend to map regions comparable to the size of our own solar system
around the nearest and brightest stars. Our work will also help to
understand and break the barrier that has prevented the direct imaging
of planets in orbit about other stars. We also hope to see nascent
planetary systems, which may reveal precious clues about how planets
and solar systems form.

Documentary Film

If you have only a few minutes to find out about the Lyot Project, we
suggest viewing the new documentary produced by the American Museum of
Natural History's Science Bulletins. This documentary which is just
under eight minutes long can be seen in the museum's Rose Center for
Earth and Space, or online at astrobulletin.amnh.org.

Acknowledgements

The Lyot Project is supported by the
National Science Foundation, the US Air Force Office of Scientific
Research, Detachment 15 of the Air Force Research Laboratory, The
National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Michelson Fellowship
Program, as well as the generous contributions of the Museum's patrons
and visitors. We are particularly grateful to the Cordelia Corporation,
Hillary and Ethel Lipsitz, the Vincent Astor Fund, and Judy Vale
for their generous support for the project.